Over 40,000 graveyard memorial records are now being released as part of Galway County Digital Mapping of Graveyards Project. The aim of the project is to support communities and diaspora to connect with their past by unlocking valuable graveyard data sources and making them available as open-source data that will be free for all to use.
Galway County Council working with various community groups and organisations have been collecting and collating valuable data relating to those who are buried in various graveyards for several years.
With funding from the Heritage Council, the Open Data Engagement Fund and its own resources, the Council has developed and made available an app specifically for use by surveyors at the local level for memorial surveys, along with associated data management and validation processes.
In addition to this, Galway County Council, Galway Rural Development, Forum Connemara and the Heritage Council has provided funding to local groups to employ experts to work with and train local communities on how to use this technology and to undertake drone mapping of graveyards.
Through this funding and the hard work and dedication of community volunteers they how are in the position to make available these 40,000 records.
It is proposed to transfer and update more memorial records and also to map graveyards and record further memorial inscriptions in the coming months and years; subject to available resources. A Burial Search Application has been created to allow easy searching and display of the data.
This information will be made available through Galway County Council’s Open Data Portal galwaycoco.maps.arcgis.com/home/index html and https://data.gov.ie/
